Young people form very romantic notions as to the wonders to be seen in travelling; and all such castle-builders must be sadly disappointed in the incidents and sights presented by a long sea voyage. The deep blue sea is certainly beautiful, and it is interesting to watch the fish playing below the ship's keel, far down in the clear water; the sunrise and sunset, too, are very glorious, when ship and rigging seem to be turned to gold, and the sea, far as the eye can reach, one mass of glorious molten metal, gently heaving, or here and there broken by a ripple. But day after day the same monotony: no change; nothing but sea and sky, far as the eye could reach, and in the deep silence of the mighty ocean there is something awe-imposing and oppressive to the spirit. I had seen it in its wildest mood, and when the waves lightly danced and sparkled; and now, one day, when the voyage was about half over, came a calm, with the sun beating down day by day with a fervent heat that rendered the iron-work of the ship too hot to be touched, while the pitch grew soft in every seam. The sea just gently heaved, but there was not the slightest breath of air to fan our cheeks, and sailors and captain walked impatiently about waiting for the coming breeze, which should take us farther upon our way. We were about four hundred miles, I suppose, from the nearest land, and for days the only thing that had taken our attention was the occasional ripple made by a shoal of fish, or the slow, sailing, gliding flight of a huge albatross, seeming in its sluggish way to float up and down in the air, as though upon a series of inclined planes. I was standing one afternoon beneath the awning, talking to the captain, when one of the men aloft announced a boat on the lee bow. "What is she?" said the captain. "Boat or canoe, sir," said the man. "Any one in her?" said the captain. "Can't see a soul, sir," said the man. Well, this was a change, to break the monotony. A boat was soon manned and put off, with both the captain and myself in the sternsheets; and then the men bent to their oars and rowed in the direction pointed out. Before long we could see the canoe, for such it proved to be, lightly rising and falling upon the gentle swell; but it seemed unoccupied, and we rowed on till we were close up, but still no one showed. At last the bow-man stood up with his boat-hook; and, as we closed up, laid hold of the light bark canoe, and drew it alongside. But it was not unoccupied. There in the bottom, with fish that he had caught lying by him, in company with a spear and several fishing-lines and roughly-made hooks, was the owner of the canoe--a fine-looking, dusky-hued, half-clad savage, lying as though asleep, but quite dead--evidently from want of water; for there were fish enough in the canoe to have sustained life for some days.